No Swimming Here

I don’t even miss it anymore.

Well, I was never good at it,

could never manage a crawl, 

just a slow breaststroke,

or backstroke

before my hair grew long

and needed protection

from the chlorine.

But I did go twice a week

regularly,

as regular as clockwork,

as regularly as religious people

went to church on Sundays.

So it left a gap,

an absence

at first.

Then there were the friends,

seen now only in passing 

in the street

or at the Co-op

or in writing,

heard only on the telephone

not in the echoey pool

or drowned out in the showers.

So there was an absence.

There is an absence.

All is quiet there now

and so I am still waiting.

We are all waiting

still

waiting.

https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2021/06/29/no-swimming-here-by-lynn-white-i-am-still-waiting-series/